The Living and the Dead (2007) Reviews

You have to be in a mood for this. If you liked The Hours, Little Children, Fire Walk With Me, you will like this. Awesome art direction. Great attention to detail. A visual experience, i must say. I thought it was a very original creepy story about a delusional, schizophrenic son and the climax of his illness. Loved it. I guess you have to be a certain type of human to appriciate this movie.
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Yes cheap production and seemed more theater like, thats ok with me so long as the tone is set right, and this movie accomplished that. However, though with lots of potential, it really had no "umph" to back it up. Oh yes, and its not a war movie as the above mentioned genre classification states.
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This was confusing, but I wasn't bored. Jeremy Knox of 'Film Threat' wrote 'relentlessly sad and grim.' He is right. This film made me miserable for days. . I think it works better as a thriller than like, "Hard Candy" because everyone is sympathetic, making it more disturbing. The sick mom, the stressed dad, the psychotic son- all were sad enough characters that you didn't want the inevetible disaster to befall them. I loved how the schizoprenic case of arrested development was both creepy and pathetic. I never quite understood the intentions of the character. Why did he do what he did? Did he think he was 'curing' mummy? Did he see the chance to be in control with an invalid old woman? Did he have a incestous complex? One finds themselves feeling bad for the insane son as well as not wanting his mom to die. It got trippy around the middle, but it's nice to think Rumley had something original instead of a rehash. It's hardly 'enjoyable,' but it did a lot with emotion and atmosphere.
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